Hey there! Howdy! Howyadoin?
Yeah, me too.
Look, by now, anybody reading, if there was anybody, would understand that I’m no Nostradamus. My crystal ball is cloudy. I can’t make sense of the tea leaves. It’s always a good bet if you wager I’ll be wrong. Still. It sure does feel like whoever’s running this wretched simulation is revelling in screwing us over, and that means another Trump Presidency.
Think about it.
Somebody’s rigging this game.
Take Saturday’s assassination attempt.
First, yes, O.K., I’ll get with the program and sign on to the pieties about the utter unacceptability of political violence, since, after all, two can play that game soldier, and this mess isn’t going to get any better if every politician who stands behind a podium is just another duck in the shooting gallery. I know.
I do feel like a hypocrite joining everybody else on their virtuous trip down the high road, though, since, let’s face it, I’ve wished most fervently for Trump’s demise from the moment he rode down his gold-plated escalator in 2015, but that’s indecent and wrong, so my bad. (Me shouting at the sky: I meant natural causes, dummy!) Now, sure, Donald has repeatedly incited political violence himself, and several people died at the hands of the mob he sent to the Capitol to put an end to American democracy, but that doesn’t make it right to pop a cap in him and give him a taste of his own medicine. And yes, nobody has done more than Donald to create the atmosphere within which political assassinations are predictable instead of unthinkable – this is the guy, remember, who idly watched it all on TV while his red-hat brigade erected a gallows to hang his own Veep – but that doesn’t justify filling the bastard full of hot lead. And I’ll grant you, the fact that a kid had easy access to a military grade assault rifle just perfect for the job has everything to do with the gun-happy Republican politics to which Donald has leant his full-throated support, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to get felled by the very sort of weapon he and his MAGA maniacs are only too pleased to see flooding America’s streets. And no doubt, Trump himself has quipped to his slack-jawed acolytes that maybe his political opponents should be taken care of by “the Second Amendment people”, but it still isn’t proper if he then reaps what he sowed. And sure, there would have been no boo-hoos around here if COVID had killed him, or he choked to death on a cheeseburger, or Melania finally reached her breaking point and slipped him the shiv, but it’s not right to hope for such things, or cheer when they happen, let alone condone politics conducted at the end of a gun barrel.
O.K?
With that out of the way, what really gets me is that the shooter missed. There he was, somehow unimpeded by the Secret Service, prone on a rooftop with clear line of sight, scope attached, only 400 feet away, which for an AR-15 is not at all a long shot (properly handled it’s accurate out to at least five times that far), and he misses. Apparently a local cop popped his head above the roof line at just the right moment, trying to clamber up, forcing the guy to rush his shot. Look, I’m not saying it would have been better if he hit the mark, I actually don’t think so, I’m just saying, that feels a lot like Divine intervention, doesn’t it? In fact, it seems so improbable that there’s a lot of tinfoil-hatted discussion on social media about the whole thing being fixed, which it wasn’t, of course, but Donald sure was a lucky, lucky boy (unlike the poor guy who took the bullet instead). Plus, it was the worst thing that could have happened for those of us still praying that Trump doesn’t regain the White House. Now Donald’s a folk hero. His idiotic fist-pumping was captured in a photo that’s being described as every bit as iconic as the flag being raised at Iwo Jima:
My God, can you imagine how far his campaign is going to run with an image like that? It’s no wonder the Batshit Battalion is running around claiming it was staged – it’s way better than any of the made-up superhero bullshit in those non-fungible tokens he was hawking a while back! For the love of Christ, they even caught Old Glory in the frame! I’m surprised it isn’t already being sold on T-shirts and mugs, though come to think of it, maybe it is. Hang on, I’ll check…
Yup:
Sigh.
Now Agent Orange will be out there at his Nuremberg rallies, exclaiming that it takes more than a bullet to stop him from fighting for America (maybe, but fictitious bone spurs did the trick, eh Donny?) Goddammit. Trying to put an end to him may have just put Donald over the top. Consider, too, that if the punk’s aim had been better, Trump’s martyrdom might have served only to propel his MAGA successor to victory. Trumpism doesn’t end with Trump. Shooting him just gets us to the next guy, maybe Ron DeSantis, or Josh Hawley, or some similar GOP Freedom Caucus moron vowing to carry on the sacred mission of Dear Leader, cruising to the win on the high-octane emotion of those enraged at being denied the joy of another Trump term. We were screwed coming and going, the minute the Secret Service dropped the ball and didn’t secure the obvious sniper’s perch in plain view about 140 yards away, a fuck-up that I wouldn’t have thought possible. I guess it was! But how?
It’s like someone cleared a path for the would-be assassin, who was there just to make sure my side loses in November.
This afternoon, I’m idly browsing Twitter, or “X”, or whatever the hell it is, when I get an Apple News alert that Aileen Cannon, the legally illiterate Trump-appointed MAGA judge in Florida, has dismissed the charges in the classified documents case. WHAT? We had him dead to rights! She concluded, contrary to all prior jurisprudence, that Jack Smith’s appointment as Special Counsel was unconstitutional! This on the heels of SCOTUS granting him absolute immunity for “official acts”, which I bet all those Trumpy judges think is a term of art that leaves them with a lot more wiggle room than we’d like to believe. It’s not over yet, but c’mon, this case will never be heard before the election now.
Doesn’t it make you wonder what diabolical force is fixing things so thoroughly for this raping, thieving, grifting, fraud of a wannabe Mussolini? It’s unreal. It’s not true-to-life as we once knew it. It’s as if the laws of physics dictate that he skates, no matter what. It’s like he’s got what the screenwriters call “plot armour”. Like it’s part of the program.
THEN, we get shit-hammered with the news that Donald has picked J.D. Vance as his running mate! J.D. Vance!!! The slimy, flip-flopping, election-denying, sycophantic, erstwhile never-Trump lickspittle who’s spent the last year boot-licking Dear Leader, while buying so thoroughly into the deranged MAGA mindset that immediately after Trump dodged a bullet he Tweeted this:
Oh sure, it’s Biden’s fault. This guy’s beyond parody. Back in 2016 he was calling Donald “America’s Hitler”, “an idiot”, and “cultural heroin”, and now he’s an election-denying MAGA extremist. It’s the most brazen case of cynical opportunism I’ve ever seen, and no, I’m not forgetting about Ted Cruz and Elise Stefanik. Moreover, in no way is this guy qualified to be President, which listen, he may well be in short order, Donald isn’t exactly young, healthy, and compos mentis. I know we’re all weary of octogenarians in the Oval, but do we really want this 39 year old whelp, with absolutely no executive experience in any capacity, and only 18 mediocre months of elected office under his belt, as Commander-in-Chief? Really?
Vance now professes to be a full-bore authoritarian so extreme he’s to the right of the guys who drafted Project 2025. He’s a radical, frightening pick as Veep to a frail old man succumbing to dementia. I’d rather have Ron DeSantis. He’s such an awful choice that I can’t escape the feeling that somebody’s lurking just off stage, messing with the scenery, buggering up the lighting, and playing a sick joke on we poor, unwitting actors as we try to stick to the script.
Nope. You can’t fool me. We’re off the map here. Things have gone from improbable, to vanishingly unlikely, to flat-out impossible. I’m telling you: this shit is literally impossible. Somebody’s pulling some strings that are beyond human ken, and busting a gut laughing. To paraphrase Jacques Vallee, I’m tired of watching this twisted movie. I want a word with the projectionist.
Maybe I can get him to call off the plague of frogs.
the needlefish 